They
say that a lengthy appeal process will be available to all - even if it
means millions of families will live in limbo until they get a final
decision on their legal status.

AFFECTED

Millions
of people fled to neighbouring India after Bangladesh declared itself
an independent country from Pakistan on 26 March 1971, sparking a bitter
war. Many of the refugees settled in Assam.

Under the
Assam Accord, an agreement signed by then PM Rajiv Gandhi in 1985, all
those who cannot prove that they came to the north-eastern state before
24 March 1971 will be deleted from electoral rolls and expelled as they
are not considered legitimate citizens.

More than 32 million
people submitted documents to the NRC to prove they were citizens, but
four million of them have been excluded from the published list.

Many Bengalis - a linguistic minority in Assam - are worried they will be deported en masse.

Hasitun
Nissa, who spoke to the BBC's Joe Miller days before the list was
published, said she had never known a home outside the state's
floodplains.

It is where the 47-year-old schoolteacher spent her
childhood, where she studied, where she got married and where she had
her four children.

She said her family arrived in India before
1971 but she expected to be stripped of her Indian citizenship and
feared her land rights, voting rights and freedom would be in peril.

Activists
say the NRC is now being used as a pretext for a two-pronged attack -
by Hindu nationalists and Assamese hardliners - on the state's Bengali
community, a large portion of whom are Muslims.

Like Hasitun, many
Bengalis live in the wetlands dotted along the Bramaputra river, moving
around when water levels rise. Their paperwork, if it exists, is often
inaccurate.

Officials claim illegal Bangladeshis are enmeshed in
the Bengali population, often hiding in plain sight with forged papers -
and a thorough examination of all documents is the only way to find
them.

But Bengali campaigner Nazrul Ali Ahmed is adamant that the NRC is serving another agenda entirely.

"It is nothing but a conspiracy to commit atrocities," he told the BBC.

"They are openly threatening to get rid of Muslims, and what happened to the Rohingya in Myanmar, could happen to us here."

Such
alarming comparisons are dismissed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's
government, which emphasises that the NRC is an apolitical task,
overseen by the country's secular Supreme Court.

After human
rights organisations began to express concern, the civil servant in
charge of the NRC, Prateek Hajela, released a statement stressing that
the law required him to make "no differentiation on the basis of
religion or language" in determining citizenship.

But
correspondents say the prime minister has never been shy of expressing
his preference for Hindu Bangladeshi migrants, whom he says should be
embraced by India.

Other "infiltrators", Mr Modi told a crowd in 2014, would be deported.

His Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is considering a bill that would enshrine the rights of Hindu migrants in law.

Indeed,
a promotional song posted on Facebook by the NRC itself does little to
calm the nerves of those worried about a Hindu nationalist witch hunt.

"A new revolution, to defeat the alien enemy, is beckoning," a young woman sings, "bravely let us shield our motherland."

DEPORTATIONS

Siddhartha
Bhattacharya, Assam's law minister and a member of the BJP, is in no
doubt about the fate of those who have been rejected.

"Everyone
will be given a right to prove their citizenship," he told the BBC. "But
if they fail to do so, well, the legal system will take its own
course."

That, Bhattacharya clarified, would mean expulsion from India.

At present, correspondents say, that seems
little more than a threat aimed at whipping up Hindu support for the BJP
ahead of elections.

No deportation procedures have been put in
place, and Bangladesh, already burdened by the Rohingya crisis, has
shown no sign of being open to accepting a raft of new refugees.

Nonetheless, campaigners like Samujjal Bhattacharyya say something must be done.

His
organisation, the All Assam Students' Union, has been agitating for the
expulsion of illegal Bangladeshis - regardless of their religion - for
decades.

If deportations don't happen, he says, "the illegal
foreigner will intrude upon the corridor of power. We are not prepared
to be second-class citizens".

Hasitun Nissa takes such rhetoric seriously.

"We have never harmed Hindus. We can live peacefully side-by-side," she says. "But I fear bad news will come."